The Constable and and the Crow: A tale of Yharnam
by JackSkyandCosmos
Summary: In which an unreliable young narrator with a dubious past come to Yharnam in search of a cure to a dread ailment, and gets more than he bargained for. I've deliberately tried to write it in the style of H.P. Lovecraft (whose work heavily influenced Bloodborne), and have done my best to replicate his strange; flamboyant style and themes of cosmic horror.


**The Constable and the Crow**

 _A Tale of Yharnam_

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is a work of fan fiction, written to pay tribute to both the video game Bloodborne and the visionary author H.P. Lovecraft. I in no way seek financial gain from it, and the settings, concepts, and some of the characters within remain the intellectual property of From Software and Sony Entertainment.

Prologue

The terrifying light of the blood red moon bleeds through the gaps in the shutters and illuminates my parchment. My hand shakes uncontrollably as I write this, and the quill drips ink between the lines of dialogue as I attempt to put down this record, however sparse and brief, of the circumstances that led me to this point. If my account seems unreliable or the narrative broken, then the reader must forgive me, for I am distracted with great frequency by the back of my hand holding the quill in the ruby light, upon which a dense knot of beastly hairs has recently begun to sprout, and seems but to grow as if by the minute…

Furthermore, one cannot but be remiss in one's narrative when one is accosted not only by the unearthly howls echoing through the accursed night outside, the now ever present cry of the hunt; but also the dread memories which assault one's own mind, as if still I have not properly awoken from the terrible dreams that afflict me by night as my increasingly base urges do by day.

One can get at least a sense of security by boarding up one's house, as myself and Amele did before she was rendered bedridden by her condition. Even now I hear her unearthly cries from the lower floor… But what boards can one put up in the mind, where perhaps the most awful terrors lurk? Those borne of inhuman knowledge, and of things that perhaps only death can truly silence, if they can be at all…

Thus the only defence I have stowed for this purpose is the blunderbuss currently secured in my strongbox at my feet. So if my narrative should suddenly cease, you, dear reader, will know that the howling from the ether has become too much to bear…

But before that comes to pass I must attempt to recount, for posterity, how I ended up in this wretched town, this ill-fated citadel, and with the tides of time against me I will focus on but one period and my encounter with perhaps the only two honorable persons left this ill fated citadel (unless you count myself and poor Amele, of which I have my doubts):the Constable and the Crow.

1.

Of my arrival in Yharnam I naturally remember very little. My affliction had left me weak and delusional; what had started with intense headaches and feints had progressed to seizures, vomiting and hallucinations. I could no longer tell the real from the dream at least a half of the time. The underground doctors I paid in my homeland had told me of an incurable growth deep in my brain, near to the region known as the amygdala, and that my only recourse was to set my affairs in order by my family and prepare for my final day. Of course, as you may well divine, I had heard the rumours of this place, of miracle cures and blood saints, and set out post haste in my disheveled state.

Of my recovery I have vague memories of stumbling into a cathedral, of a contract, of blood ministration… and then of course my awakening, revived, refreshed, more alive than I had ever been all my life. The pain in my head had gone, my skin had recovered its pallor (though it was always a little greyish), the fluids in my lungs and belly had receded. As I arose from sweat soaked sheets and stared up at the great hall of the recovery room, the grotesque hooded statues above seemed as angels of elysium plains to my utter joy. I was alive! I was well!

What may seem more curious to the reader is not why I arrived in Yharnam, but why I stayed. For this I must make a candid confession: I had not just dragged myself towards Yharnam for a cure but also away from my homeland, for I had accrued a series of debts from youthful misdoings. I must also confess I felt a strange affinity with the place, a passing strange desire to reside there at least for a time to see it's marvels, which I must now put down to the euphoria of my unexpected wellness after so long a period of malady. Thus it was to the great surprise and I imagine somewhat disdain of the healing church nun's attending to me that I asked as to where I might find lodgings.

The day I left my sickbed the Yharnam sunrise seemed a most glorious thing indeed, bathing the gothic spires, wrought iron balusters and crooked streets in a golden glow the colour of glorious life itself. Such was my ecstatic gratitude to this town that have saved me that I paid no heed to the derisory, nay, hostile glares of some of the inhabitants in the street, the strange shapes lurking in alleys, or the ever present bizarre effigies mounted in every square and courtyard. As I strode down those cobbled, pebble strewn streets I was a man born-again, a traveller at the start of a glorious adventure.

Oh, naive youth! Oh, foolish ambition!

2.

The lodgings to which I alluded were a set of cramped rooms on the second floor of a narrow, red brick terraced house at the bottom of the Central Yharnam thoroughfare. From the outside the structure looked to be in the modern, iron n'brick style, but was topped with a curious spire and seemed to lean a little, as if compressed by the similar houses which flanked it either side. The windows were also curiously all iron-barred, as were those of all the other dwellings, which at the time I put down to an ascetic preference for modernism.

The landlord resided above me and was an ageing wheelchair-bound paraplegic named Petr, who was polite by Yharnam standards but seemed to want to leave my presence as soon as any business was concluded. It did not impress upon me at that time, giddy with merryness as I was, the curiosity of a disabled man in a city supposedly in possession of miraculous blood. Nor did it overly trouble me when I heard him shouting in the night at demon's perhaps only he could see, a sharp bellowing: "Away, away". I put that down to the nocturnal confusion that can afflict the elderly, and left him to his solitudinous ravings.

In those first few days I explored only within my immediate vicinity, up the Central Yharnam thoroughfare and into the square beyond. My initially enthusiasm was only dented but lightly by the somewhat desertedness of the streets, even at midday hours. I made enquiries as to where I may find a desk for my writings, and to whereby I might find passage to visit the famed Castle Cainhurst, host of the monarchs of old and situated on that great island in the middle of the Lake east of the town. The former item I managed to obtain from a most spiteful hag lurking near the viaduct, who seemed to spit out only the most essential of words before shoving the writing bureau my way and slamming the door behind her. But as to the latter, I was warned on no uncertain terms by every resident that I met that I was to cease my enquiries about Cainhurst at once, and not make any attempt to cross the land-bridge that lead to the infamous castle. A shoesmith I met in a tavern, drunk on the blood that is as ubiquitous to Yharnam as liquor is to my homeland, let slip in a barely comprehensible mumble that there there was some kind of disagreement in progress between the Healing Church and The Cainhurst residents, whom they called Vilebloods. Notwithstanding, following my interest in this matter the suspicious stares of the city folk seemed only to intensify, and I ceased my probing in this direction post-haste.

3.

Having aborted my Cainhurst plans, I set out one morning in the direction of Cathedral ward, with the intention to navigate it's alleys and perhaps descent to the old part of the town. The reader may have divined my origins as being of a troubled childhood, predisposed to crookery, but it may surprise one to hear that I have had some education, and my interest in history may rival that of a noble scion. Having missed the Cainhurst coach, so to speak, I now yearned to see the peculiar early architecture of Old Yharnam, where the first settlers placed their roots and founded this unique township.

Despite my enthusiasm I was not in good spirits, however. Petr's ravings had been of particular volume and aggression the night past. I could hear his infernal banging and cries of "away, away!" through the floorboards of my ceiling, so much so I feared he must be embattled with an assailant. Out of neighbourly concern I rose what little courage I possess and ascended the creaky staircase, but found his door locked. With nothing more to be done, I returned to my bed, but even long after the cacophony ceased I could hear a sickly popping, which I assumed at the time to be less than adequate plumbing.

Furthermore, as I emerged from the dwelling that morning I passed a man known as "Tiber" in the doorway coming the other way. Tiber was a sort of helper or nurse to Petr, and was of such bizarre disposition (even by Yharnam standards) that I tended to give him a wide berth. He was extraordinarily thin and ghostly pale, and had a festering head injury which my eyes strained to avoid inspecting too closely. He was also a mute, and as we passed he gave me a look of such horror that I quickly sped up my pace and was glad to be out into the deathly quiet street.

I had thought my mood would brighten as I passed through Cathedral ward, it being the district in which I had found my salvation. However, as I traversed the square which sits adjacent to Oedon's chapel I came over in a hot flush, for although it will sound extraordinary to disbelieving ears I felt that I was being _watched,_ not by any person in the square itself but from above! Instinctively, I elevated my gaze to the church spires that loom above the square, and although I saw only the gothic edifice of the chapel building the feeling of being examined only intensified, and worse, a migranal pressure began to build in my head precisely where the growth that had caused my illness had been! In what the doctors had called the amygdala! In fright I'm sorry to say that I ran from the square into the alleys, with the full intention of reporting to the church healing rooms for another transfusion, for surely my ailment was returning! But as I put distance from Oeden's chapel, the sensation began to fade, much to my relief, and I continued on my fateful journey.

4.

If I had thought that my sojourn to Old Yharnam was to bear any more fruit than my attempts to see Cainhurst, I was to be corrected in my assumption most abruptly. For on arriving at the sarcophagal building that I knew to contain the passageway to the old town, I found the area blocked by the scruffy armed local militia that seem to gather with increasing frequency on the streets. Some dread malady seemed to be afoot, for Healing Church doctors, recognisable by their robes of pearl white and obsidian black were scurrying around this border looking concerned. Furthermore, great coffins, bound by curious chains, were being loaded onto carts by various hunched over figures. What disease could have afflicted Old Yharnam that could not be resolved by the blood that gave this town it's very meaning? My enquiries at the border only elicited a gruff bark from a pitchfork-armed militia man: "Ashen blood! Away!" And thus I was promptly shoed from the area.

Crestfallen and nervous, I returned to central Yharnam and quickly descended into one of the ubiquitous basement bars set in the below ground level of the townhouses. Upon entering the dank interior, the figure sitting at the wrought iron bar stood out as a foreigner almost immediately. For one, he was nursing an ale, rather than the blood that Yharnam residents are more likely to imbibe. For second, his clothing was of a distinct familiarity to me, being of exceptionally fine cloth, and consisting of a navy blue, brass buckled garb of a military fashion...why, but he was wearing a garb and possessing the cane of the constabulary of my own land! As he turned to face me I saw his pale blue eye and what little colour I had drained from my face. I was his quarry, I was sure of it! He had followed me here to make me atone for my sins! And sure enough, his first word to me was an insult! "Vermin!" He spake, and spat into an upturned metal bucket at his feet.

I quickly about turned and made with haste to leave that accursed hovel, but just then two pitch wielding militiamen stumbled into the narrow bar, half blood-drunk already. My way blocked, I turned back to face the long blonde-haired enforcer of the law with as much courage as I could muster.

"M-me?" I stammered. He gazed at me for a good half a minute, as if assessing the quality of a lump of meat. Finally, he turned back to his ale.

"No. Not you. You are one of the sane one's, perhaps as yet uncontaminated by the filth of these streets!"

Relieved but still shaking a little, I perched next to the man and ordered a dirty brown ale from the barkeep, who looked at my choice with disdain before moving to serve the raucous militiamen the more intoxicating serving of blood.

The Constable sipped his ale.

"Ahh.." he exhaled, clearly finding his drink more refreshing with a kinsman for company.

"So you came in search of a cure. Well, was it worth it? Or have you yet had enough of these wretched beasts, freakish slugs and mad doctors?"

I was taken aback by his most singular choice of words, and spoken so openly! How daring!

"I...I was cured. Of a dread malady. A crippling ailment, sir."

The Constable fixed me again with his harrowed gaze.

"And was it worth it? Know that everything in this world has it's price. And it's rarely worth paying!" he declared, and spat again into the odd upturned bucket.

I drank deeply of the ale and ordered another. Despite having no appetite after the day's unsettling events, I felt I should eat, and asked my new unlikely companion if he cared to dine.

"Ahh!" piped the barkeep from the shadows upon hearing this.

"But I feel Valtr there has likely already had his fill! His belly will have no room for more, I'd wager!" This last statement elicited cackling laughter from the militiamen at the end of the bar, who now I noticed were blood drunk in the extreme, and in possession of unusual amounts of grubby hair about the face and hands.

Valtr, as it seems the constable's name was, growled and spat into his bucket, and then most oddly of all, proceeded to place the spittoon upon his head, but as to wear as a helmet! He abruptly stood, and I felt that a brawl was about to break out in that heinous hovel, and promptly rose to leave. Any pining I had for refreshment had receded. Valtr, however, simply brushed by the miltiamen who backed away a little wearily, although sniggered under their breath as I followed him into the now darkening street "Beast eater…."

As we parted ways in the concourse beyond the entrance way Valr leaned in close as he stared at me through eye holes bored into his iron bucket-helmet.

"If you need a familiar face, come back to this bar!" And then, even more bizarrely, performed an abrupt gesture whereby he slammed his cane to his garb and then hoisted it into the air. And with that he was off, marching in step down the street in the direction of Cathedral ward.

I returned with haste to my dwelling, and had to misfortune to find the mute Tiber lurking in the entranceway. By the gaslamp light I fancied that in his face there was a look of grotesque pleading, as if he wanted me to save him from some inner torment. In no mood for more strangeness, I bolted passed him up the stairs, and secured myself in my room to ponder the day's events.

5.

The night that followed rested me not one second from the exertions of the preceding day. Petr's howling, yelling and bashing reached a frenzied crescendo of such force that I felt the ceiling would surely collapse. Worse, the sickly popping sound I had heard the night previous continued well up until the dawn. It was this latter emanation that struck a dread terror into my very soul; it's monotonous suckling sound forcing me to completely doubt my previous diagnosis of a plumbing issue. It was almost certainly organic in nature and of ill intent, I was sure. Once, in another of my periodic flashes of concern for my fellow man I made to ascend the staircase again, but it was this hollow popping that made me turn straight back around and return to my chambers, without even approaching the door that I was sure was forming the only barrier between myself and some abysmal truth.

The next day, bleary eyed and unrested, I resolved to seek out Valtr to request assistance in resolving this issue. For I could not stomach another night like that one, and I did not feel assured of the compliance of whatever law enforcement the shadowy healing church or the blood drunk, crazed militiamen might provide.

I found the constable lurking in the same hovel, imbibing his ale and spitting into his bucket-hat-spittoon. Wearily pulling up a bar stool next to him, even the scrape of it's legs against the dusty floor was enough to jangle my nerves to breaking point. I ordered a blood vial for the first time, feeling that I needed something stronger than alcohol to remedy my woes. Valtr clearly didn't approve, but to his credit he listened with intense concentration to my tale of neighbourly hell as I rambeliningly told it, pausing only to gulp down the iron-tasting blood which was to become my poison, in a multitude of unimaginable ways.

"Well…" he said after I had finally finished. "It would seem you have an issue… very well. Tonight I have to attend...business, but tomorrow- we will cleanse your dwelling and solve this mystery!"

Although I did not fully comprehend his words I was grateful, and spent the day in his company consuming several more vials of blood. The irony was not lost on me that having spent my youth avoiding the constabulary at all costs, here in this foreign land I was becoming near dependent on one of their number for both kinship and protection from horrors!

By the day's end I am sorry to say I was feeling most intoxicated, and in no mood to spend the night in my dwelling where I felt the sounds from above would drive me beyond insanity's gates and into an abysmal mental void. Thus I descended to the lower quarters of Cathedral Ward to seek a lady of the night. In a blood drunk stupor I ambled down the gaslamp street in a thick fog which had descended upon the town, feeling little care for the shuffling shapes of darkness that I brushed aside as my unexpected lust drove me forth. My fear of such night creatures had all but faded; nay, in my stupor I nigh on imagined them to be my kin.

Finding the door of a known wench of such a disposition I rapped on the wooden portal and was beckoned within. Amele was a conventional beauty for sure, but it should be said here that my natural disposition was unintimate, that is I had until this point felt an aversion to matters of the purely physical, and had in my previous life shunned female companionship. My innate shyness had always sat at odds with my nascent criminality, and I would as a matter of choice avoid the eyes of the pretty ladies who frequent the streets of my homeland. Why, my youthful self would have found the very idea of taking a lady of the night to my bed chamber to be positively abhorrent!

But this night I was as if one of the beasts of the field, aided both by the bittersweet intoxication of the blood and Amele's skillful guidance. She boasted that she had the royal blood of Cainhurst within her, like several of those ladies of that profession of Yharnam who had fled the quarrel between their clan and the healing church. Royalty disguised as skillful witchery, she guided me to places unforeseen on blood red satin sheets. Yharnam now truly embraced me.

After our exertions were done, I fell into slumber's arms I had fallen between Amele's legs. But sleep was not to bring peaceful salvation, for my dreams were of a fitful sort that I wish upon no living man or beast. I found myself in a vast, twisted landscape, adorned with baroque gravestones and poisoned lakes. Crustacious, slimy beings crawled along the fetid earth and the outlines of immense antiquated castles could be glimpsed in the distance, against the roiling blue and orange clouds of a turbulent sky. The atmosphere dripped with dread, and I fancied beneath hollow winds I could detect the sound of an infant's cry, a sound that followed me beyond sleep and into the waking world when I awoke beside Amele's pale sleeping form in besweated sheets. On my honour, I cannot say that that infants cry has ever truly disappeared from that night hence.

6.

The afternoon hence I met with Valtr in our usual watering hole. After we had taken of our respective poisons to steady the nerves, we proceeded unto my dwelling in Central Yharnam to plot our fateful deed. En route, it was obvious that something was afoot, for the number of militiamen had doubled; nay, tripled beyond their usual numbers. The specimens out that evening were hairier and more blood drunk than usual, emitting blasphemous mutterings and seemingly grabbing any object that might conceivably be considered a weapon, be it pitchforks, wooden panels, iron spikes or butcher's cleavers. Amongst them were disheveled looking church doctors and more heavily armed individuals sharpening barbaric looking contraptions that could only be the product of a most homicidal brain.

As we passed through the square that sits beyond the gates that lead to the central thoroughfare a preacher in rags that might once have been church garb was holding forth a bizarre sermon to an enraptured group of militiamen. I caught only a snippet of audible words in his diatribe:

"Here we stand! Oh citizens, here we stand… feet rooted in the earth...but the cosmos is so very near us...so very near us, perhaps right above our heads! Don't you see? The sky and the cosmos are one!"

At this last statement he thrusted his hands skywards and the giddy crowd repeated his last statement in a raptuas chant.

"The sky and the cosmos are one! The sky and the cosmos are one!"

As we scuttled past a hastily erected bonfire beyond the gates I timidly enquired to Valtr as the the meaning of this surge of activity.

"Aye…" he chuckled. "It is the hunt tonight. Vermin, everywhere."

And following this he elaborated no further.

7.

Upon arriving at the dwelling we were forced to hang back out of site momentarily, as none other than Tiber the mute was just at that point entering the building. He looked even more fretful than usual, indeed he looked as one marching to his very grave. The gaping wound on the back of his hair festered in the setting sunlight, hair and blood plastered together in a grim fibrous pattern.

Once he had ingressed, Valtr and I cautiously assessed the building. Noticing that Petr's top floor shutters were open to the elements, Valtr devised a plan of sorts; at a designated hour he would ascend the building by means of the iron shutters that clasped it's facade, and I would break through the door to Petr's room from the interior. Thus we would have two angles of attack, and be better placed to deal with whatever horrors we would be sure to encounter within.

That decided, we set our pocket watches in time and bade farewell. Valtr donned his helmet and proceeded to dissipate into the gathering mob.

I ascended to my room and awaited the dreaded time of action. As the hours passed, the sun descended and a gibbous moon ascended in it's place. The sounds of the street increased in volume, and I could hear shouts, screams, the whinny of horses, and slashing, screeching nigh on murderous sounds emanating from the streets. I was convinced a festival of murder must be taking place on the streets that night, it's reasons I was either oblivious of or would not allow myself to comprehend.

My dear reader may have assumed this orchestra of slaughter right beyond my walls would drown out Petr's doings from the chamber above. But no, as that bloody night encroached his ravings began as if by clockwork, along with the suckling sound that was now my life's bane. But tonight..no longer! I resolved this to myself whilst drinking down the dregs of a blood vial I had sequestered from the drinking hovel earlier in the day.

At last the hour of our engagement came, and I arose from my bed, blood drunk, lust satiated and inflamed with a wild curiosity and impulsiveness that I imagined matched that of the aspiring hunters this minute creating havoc in the streets beyond these walls.

Picking up an iron balustrade I had looted earlier to serve as a battering ram, I once again climbed those creaking stairs to Petr's door, beyond which the sounds of hell itself could be heard: Petr's awful cries, the ever present popping and suckling. And somewhere in the background of my mind, the ever present infant's wail.

Now mad with the blood I swung my fashioned device at the door, which it hit with an awful crash but held fast. Beyond the door, the intense discord only rose further. I swung again, roaring with the passion of the swing and a mighty crack was heard as the door splinted. A dread screaming forced it's way through the buckling door as I swung again, and this time it imploded, swinging off it's hinges as I roared and swung into the room.

8.

They say that when a man experiences events of extreme horror, of such nigh on existential ruin, that his mind can often erase portions that his sanity might yet remain intact. We choose not to remember physical or mental pain in it's exacting detail, lest the truth of it break us. Attempting to recall the events that follow, with my hairy hand shaking uncontrollably over this sure to be accursed parchment, I can only wish that such wisdom were true.

What I recall here happened in a blur of moments, a convergence of time into base seconds. The first thing to happen as I emerged into the room was an immense bang so loud and shocking that it took me a length of time to realise that a weapon had been discharged, and a further few seconds to realise it had been discharged at me.

Petr, sat in his wheelchair in the corner like a demented pharaoh, had fired a blunderbuss from the hip. The room was long, and the ammunition consisting merely of shot pellets, so the hit was not as forceful as it might have been, but nethertheless I was staggered. Shrapnel pellets hit my hands, garb and face, opening wounds and welts that would scar me thence forth as I staggered, but such was the horrifying, grotesque, mind befuddling tableau that faced me that any pain was quickly forgotten.

In front of Petr knelt Tiber the mute, his hands bound behind his back. His face was a ghostly white that mirrored the sparse, unforgiving moon that streamed through the open shutters beyond Petr, who with shaking hands was already reloading his weapon, the smoke from the previous discharge not yet cleared. But Petr was not the most dangerous horror to a curse that sacrilegious chamber that night.

Looming over Tiber was a being of such vulgar fascination and dread that the very knowledge of it's existence will likely cause many a man to lose whatever faith he had in this cruel universe. I will describe it here out of a selfish need to provide myself with catharsis.

The being was humanoid in stature, and about five foot at full height, but there any similarity between its kind and our race ceases to exist. It's skin was a sickly, translucent pearl shade, and it was grasping poor Tiber's head with six elongated, spiked digits. It balanced itself upon webbed feet more akin to an amphibious creature, and from my rear-side view appeared to be wearing a robe of some ragged, oil stained material. But the true horror was what emanated from what passed for a head on this demon, this insult to life and sanity itself. A long, bulbous tentacle, as thick as a man's thigh, had extended from its crown and had channeled itself wormlike into the gaping wound in Tiber's skull! As I watched with mounting horror, my blood drunk rapture now evaporated, the tentacle undulated with bulging rhythms, causing a propulsion of lumps that began at the tip and worked their way backwards to the creature's own brain. It was obvious what was occurring here, even if I did not want to believe it: the creature was devouring Tiber's brain, his very being! And given Petr's position as onlooker, had been doing so for many nights now passed! Thus explained his muteness, his dumbness, the poor man had been losing his faculties to this thing! And worse, Petr had clearly been allowing this all to happen! He had perhaps struck some faustian bargain with this devil, in exchange for his own safety, and was feeding Tiber to it piecemeal! The horror!

My awful epiphany was interrupted, however, as clearly disturbed by the boom of Petr's blunderbuss, the creature now turned to face me, slime dripping from it's tentacle as it was hastily retracted from Tiber's skull with a sticky slurp. Tiber collapsed to the floorboards, fitting violently from the sudden withdrawal, and I was brought full face to the horror before me. I now saw that below it's prime tentacle writhed a mass of smaller, seething feelers writhing like snakes in the space where a face should have been below a void like slit where might have been eyes. The being hissed violently at me, then lunged forth. It moved with surprising ungainliness, waddling like a damaged child, yet it covered the distance quickly. Why did I not run, you must be thinking, and evict myself from the room post haste? Well the truth was I was entranced, afixed to the spot by either fear, enchantment or just a morbid curiosity as to what would happen next. Hissing and suckling before me, the creature grasped my head between cold clammy hands, and began to extend it's feeding tentacle. It would desoul me as it had wretched Tiber, and there was nothing I could do to prevent my fate.

A squelchy thwack was heard and the creature staggered forward into me, releasing it's grip. The trance broken, I looked up in alarm, to see Valtr behind it, brandishing his cane. The tin hatted saviour had crept in behind through the open window. I fancy the creature looked confused, if such a thing were possible, as it struggled to compute this new threat. Tentacles a fluttering, it began to turn about on unsteady legs. But it did not get far. With such force I would swear the man must have been of inhuman strength,Valtr plunged his hand straight through the creature's back, and with a sickening crunch did rip it's pale translucent heart straight from it's body. Pale blood and organs squirted all over the constable's finely pressed tunic, and the being emitted an inhuman shriek before collapsing to the floor by my feet.

I did not have time to celebrate my miraculous fortune, however, as behind Valtr I noticed that Petr had finished reloading his weapon and was preparing to fire again at Valtr's back. Now I screamed myself, and lurched forward, ramming into the wheelchair bound wretch of a landlord with such pace that we both went careening backwards on his wheels. The blunderbuss fired into the air behind us, adding to our momentum, and we quickly careened with a smash of tinkling glass out of the window and into the night air. As we fell he wrapped his bony old arms around my neck and screeched in my ear:

"It's all your fault!"

We hit the ground two stories below and the impact winded me, the wheelchair broke apart on the hard cobbled street below. Petr's body cushioned my fall however, and I found that after a fashion I could stand, although I tasted blood and ached all over from both the bruising of the fall and the welts from the shot I'd taken earlier. Staring down I saw that Petr was clearly dead, his body now truly broken where my fall had crushed him.I had just began to extract the blunderbuss from his cold dead fingers when I noticed the hunter towering above me.

He was very heavily armored and armed, of excessive girth, and wearing a wide brimmed hat. He brandished an enormous whip of iron chains and cast a hideous outline against the moon then towerering above the street beyond him. Through obviously blood drunk eyes he surveyed the scene before him, of me above the crushed body of Petr, and abruptly sung his whip to strike me.

"You plague ridden rat!" He bellowed in an inhuman roar as he brought his chains to bear upon me. Throwing my arms in front of my face I dropped to my knees and begged for my life, all courage deserting me.

"N-no! I'm not...Don't…"

A shadow moved at abrupt speed and positioned itself between me and the hunter. In the moon and gas light I saw the curved beak of a crow mask, and the flow of robes. Two gleaming curved swords swung in the twilight. The hunter tried to react bringing his chains around to face the crow, but he was too late. The blades snipped and split, arcs of blood shot into the night air, and he collapsed, gurgling, his chains hitting the cobblestones.

The interloper came and stood over me, covered in fresh blood, swords still dripping. I waited, for an end, for a beginning, I no longer cared.

"Well, enough trembling in your boots." said a motherly female voice. The shock nearly shook me from my trauma, a woman! And perhaps an elder one too by her tone! The crow lady gestured to the fallen hunter.

"Oh, and try to forgive him. After all, a hunter must hunt." She chuckled lightly after this last utterance.

I staggered to my sore feet once again, still in shock.

"I...I...Who…."

"Ssh…" she chided. "And it's...good that you're afraid. After all, fear is what separates us from the beasts. Let's just say I'm a...I'm one that provides balance, to the hunt. Still, I must away. Try to keep your hands clean."

And with that this beaked angel, this black feathered saviour, turned to leave.

"W-wait!" I stammered. "I'm with...do you know...Valtr…"

She turned around. "Valtr? Ahh, but it does ring a bell… be careful. I know a thing or two about hunters of beasts. And that one has more than a healthy appetite for them...take care. Remember that eventually… all hunters must die."

And with that she was gone.

"I'm not a hunter!" I yelled into the ether behind her, the sound of the distant hunt echoing through the foggy thoroughfare. "I'm not a hunter!"

But there was noone there. Petr's body twitched at my feet as I turned and ran back into the dwelling.

9.

I ascended the stairs two at a time. Passed mine own floor, and stumbled breathless into the room that I had just exited by way of defenestration. But fate is a cruel mistress, and she had one last horror in store for me that night. Sitting amid the corpses of Tiber and the creature was Valtr. His cane at his side, his bucket helmet removed and upturned, he was but casually eating the last of the heart he had so gallantly ripped from the creature's body. As pale blood dripped from his chin, he spat a rubbery heart valve from his mouth into the bucket beside him and grinned.

"Vermin". he stated.

I ran. I ran from the room, descended, barred myself in mine own lodgings. There, I collapsed to my knees and I laughed. I laughed at myself, at Valtr the beast eater, at the kind crow and the hunt, at Yharnam,at the Healing Church at the cruel joke of a cosmos that cared not for our foolish desires, aspirations, or whether we mortals lived or died.

I laughed.

10.

Afterwards, the days became a blood-addled blur. I skulked the streets. I drank blood until the bar mysteriously closed and was boarded up, then I sought blood from increasingly dubious characters who resided in alleys, and from the mad old occult women of Hemwick Charnal Lane. I visited Amele often, and we partook of the blood together. Eventually, she moved to live with me in the lodgings in Central Yharnam. Valtr had disappeared that night with both the corpses, I did not see or hear from him again. Rumour had it that he had started some "league" with vague aims, I cared not, I had my blood and was grateful. No One came to investigate the events of that night, even the healing church seemed to have it's hands full with the chaos that was descending upon the town. I saw not the Crow lady again either. The hunt nights came with increasing frequency, and we boarded up the house and made a fastness of it. Residents disappeared,animals acted strangely, strange beasts stalked the streets. One night the sky glowed orange as the Healing Church burned Old Yharnam to the ground. It is said after that they fortified themselves inside Cathedral Ward, abandoning the very population they professed to govern and heal. My nightmares continued unabated, and the infant's cry could be heard at all hours. We cared not, me and Amele, caught up in our blood drunkenness; our lust, which I now see was our own way of resisting the terrible changes afoot in the world outside.

What is lust, after all, if not a raging against the futility of attempting to live in a cosmos hellbent on facilitating your own destruction?

Epilogue

My ink well ran dry two chapters ago, as you see I have written this final section of the account in blood from a vial, my last, of which I will imbibe the rest shortly and be done. I hope that my narrative is of enough coherence to serve as a warning at least. Do not come to Yharnam. There are no miracle cures in this universe, and there is no salvation for man. He is as doomed by his own curiosity as a castle built of sand before a tidal wave.

The hunt is on again tonight, and I fear this time it may be the last. The red moon has descended, and the last vestiges of order have been eroded. Chaos reigns beyond these walls, and there is only one thing left to be done. I reach now for my strong box and remove Petr's blunderbuss. As I say I have never had much courage, but I will now do what needs to be done.

I will go out into this dread night. I can hear the infant's cry and the sounds of the hunt, and they call to me, a siren as seductive as Amele's caress was all those moons ago. But, ahh, yes, Amele- there is but one last task I must complete before I join my kin on the everlasting hunt. I must repay her for the kindnesses she has shewn me. The vermin that resides in her belly as I write must be crushed. I can hear her screams now, reaching a crescendo, yes it must be done! Blunderbuss in hand I head for the door...Goodbye dear reader...I leave this last adage…

(barely legible) FEAR THE OLD BLOOD.


End file.
